Thomas meets the pirates, with added celebrity casting, in this reliably well-pitched diversion for the start of the summer holidays

Despite its cumbersome title, this latest Thomas the Tank Engine special sees a significant expansion in ambition for the amiable set of chuffers: with Eddie Redmayne and John Hurt on board, as well as Olivia Colman back for another go as neurotic steam-shovel Marion, we are firmly in the realm of celebrity casting. Not that it makes much difference to the actual content of the film, which remains reliably well-pitched at little ’uns and their slightly older siblings. Like Tale of the Brave, Lost Treasure jams locomotive action together with a pop motif supposedly beloved of kids: Brave had dinosaurs, Treasure has pirates. In short, a sinister-looking sailor is riding Sodor’s rails looking for a missing chest of loot. Shenanigans ensue. Not an all-time classic, but an efficient diversion
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The BBC Trust has recommended proposals to close down BBC Three as a broadcast channel and move it online in 2016 - but its decision is not final.

The Trust will carry out another round of consultation in the coming weeks, as it wants to feel confident that BBC Three's "risk-taking" remit and existing audience will still be served across the corporation's other TV channels and services.

BBC Trust: 'We have not ignored young people on BBC Three - they have a valid voice'

"We want a strong, sustainable BBC which is innovative, distinctive and relevant and has clear boundaries with the commercial market. We have reached our provisional conclusions with this over-arching objective in mind," said BBC Trust chairman Rona Fairhead.

"It is clear that the long-term future of broadcasting is online and the BBC needs to find new and exciting ways to help audiences make that transition, while bearing down on costs overall.
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Broadchurch was a smash hit when it debuted on ITV in 2013. Created and written by Chris Chibnall (Torchwood) and starring David Tennant (Doctor Who) and the ever-underrated Olivia Colman (Peep Show, Hot Fuzz), the debut season chronicled the devastating effect that a murder investigation had on a small fictional town on England’s Jurassic Coast, all towering cliffs and crashing waves--gorgeous, but undeniably dangerous. Tennant’s Di Alec Hardy, an outsider sent to Broadchurch to start anew after a high-profile investigation went awry, and Colman’s DS Ellie Miller, an ambitious local cop resentful of Hardy for swooping in and stealing the promotion she wanted, had some of the best crime-solving chemistry since Special Agent Dale Cooper met Sheriff Harry S. Truman on Twin Peaks. The eventual reveal of who murdered local boy Danny Latimer was a real doozy, with a twist that could have came off as cheap in
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Back when Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos first clambered barefaced upon the international stage with his daring Dogtooth, quite a few hastened to mention its striking resemblance to Arturo Ripstein’s similarly self-contained The Castle of Purity, made some 35 years earlier. In the wake of his first English-language effort The Lobster, one might even go further and compare all that Lanthimos has done thus far to Ripstein’s film: the imposed isolation behind walls that are both physical and psychological, creating a world whose structure is founded upon seemingly intransgressible rules and boundaries. Despite the jump in locale and language, The Lobster is very much a continuation or extension of the themes found in Dogtooth: the sequestered family abode is replaced by an isolated hotel complex; the overprotective father by a domineering hotel manager – the brilliant Olivia Colman. Perhaps the most significant difference, at least on first glance, is that
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Film Victoria executive Jacinta Palmer has joined Sharmill Films as marketing manager, effective July 1.

Palmer succeeds Kate McCurdy, who has held the post for five years and is departing on June 30 to pursue new endeavours in the UK.

For the past year Palmer served as locations and production services officer at Film Victoria. The state agency is advertising to fill that position, with applications closing on July 7.

Before that she was commissioned content coordinator at ABC TV and programs administration and support officer at Film Vic. Earlier in her career she was festival coordinator at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.

.Kate has been with Sharmill Films for five years and will be sadly missed,. said Sharmill Films founder Natalie Miller.. .She has been involved in all aspects of Sharmill activities including feature films and our extensive alternate content programs.

.Jacinta has strong skills in social media, copy writing and marketing.
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Set in contemporary London, Marcella aims to bring Scandinavian noir to the streets of Britain. The title character is a detective in her late 30s who returns to the Metropolitan Police’s Murder Squad after a 12-year career break to start a family.

With the abrupt end to her marriage and isolated from her daughter at boarding school, Marcella returns to work while attempting to make sense of what’s happened in her life. She is immediately assigned to investigate a spate of recent killings which bear the hallmarks of unsolved murders committed over a decade prior, a case on
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Ron Moody in Mel Brooks' 'The Twelve Chairs.' The 'Doctor Who' that never was. Ron Moody: 'Doctor Who' was biggest professional regret (See previous post: "Ron Moody: From Charles Dickens to Walt Disney – But No Harry Potter.") Ron Moody was featured in about 50 television productions, both in the U.K. and the U.S., from the late 1950s to 2012. These included guest roles in the series The Avengers, Gunsmoke, Starsky and Hutch, Hart to Hart, and Murder She Wrote, in addition to leads in the short-lived U.S. sitcom Nobody's Perfect (1980), starring Moody as a Scotland Yard detective transferred to the San Francisco Police Department, and in the British fantasy Into the Labyrinth (1981), with Moody as the noble sorcerer Rothgo. Throughout the decades, he could also be spotted in several TV movies, among them:[1] David Copperfield (1969). As Uriah Heep in this disappointing all-star showcase distributed theatrically in some countries.
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Published in 1993, Night Manager follows a British solider-turned-luxury hotel auditor (Thor‘s Tom Hiddleston) who gets roped into an intelligence operation to take down an internationally renowned arms dealer (Broadchurch‘s Olivia Colman). Tovey and his adorable ears will play a spy named Ogilvey.

The film is set in the near future where single people are arrested, transferred to The Hotel and obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days.

It marks the English-language debut of Greek director Lanthimos, who first came to international prominence with debut feature Dogtooth, winner of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard Prize and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2011 Academy Awards.

No one has done a musical like this before, keeping an uneasy beat to craft a dark replica of scared community spirit in the wake of a shocking crime.
I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

When I hear that something deadly serious has been turned into a stage musical, the first thing that springs to mind is Elephant! the all-singing, all-dancing Broadway show based on the life of “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick, within the comedy film The Tall Guy. Or, of course, Springtime for Hitler.

So when I heard that London Road, a film adaptation of a National Theatre musical production, is about a 2006 serial-murder case, my first reaction was: Hell no. The potential for getting this wrong is enormous: the probability of tonal imbalance between hammy dramatics and horrible crime is almost 100 percent.

In this excerpt from the Guardian film show, critics Xan Brooks, Catherine Shoard and Peter Bradshaw watch a serial killing get put to song as Rufus Norris directs a musical based on the Ipswich murders of 2006. Based on the testimony of local residents, London Road describes the emotions a community goes through after suffering a horrific tragedy. London Road, which includes Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy in its cast, is out now in the UK Continue reading
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The complex psychological effects that the Ipswich murders had on the town’s residents made for a uniquely gripping stage show in 2010 – and the film version is another triumph

Related: London Road: unlike any serial killer film you've seen before

Rufus Norris’s film is an utterly gripping, macabre but finally very moving cine-opera in a reportage verbatim style, dealing with the 2006 Ipswich serial murders and their complex psychological effect on the inhabitants of London Road. This is the residential street that had become the city’s red-light district, where the killer lived and where one of his victims was found. The film begins like a downbeat drama, with plenty of grimly daylit front-room interiors with depressing sofas reflected in dull, switched-off TVs. But when the newsreaders start to sing, something queasily dreamlike happens. It is an addictive forensic thriller set to music, and Olivia Colman’s presence makes
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UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 5th June to Sunday 7th June 2015…

Melissa McCarthy’s latest collaboration with director Paul Feig, the action comedy Spy, has topped the UK box office chart in its opening weekend, with the film earning £2,557,824, including £198k in previews. That’s pretty much on par with 2013’s The Heat, which debuted with £2.5 million, but less than the £3.44 million opening for Bridesmaids back in 2001.

Elsewhere in the chart, horror prequel Insidious: Chapter 3 pulled in £1,440,299 to take third place (matching the opening of the first movie but half that of Chapter 2’s £2.88 million debut), while Secret Cinema’s screenings of The Empire Strikes Back earned £304,115 to claim eighth, followed by Bollywood comedy-drama Dil Dhadakne Do with £212,719 in ninth.

In 2006, the murder of five prostitutes made one quiet Ipswich street notorious. Five years later, London Road’s darkest days were turned into a musical, and now that show has become a film. Rufus Norris and Alecky Blythe talk about telling the residents’ story in their own words – down to every last ‘um’ and ‘er’

“They were a complete pain in the neck,” sings Olivia Colman’s Julie. “Y’know, they, they’re better off 10 feet under … That’s a horrible thing to say, isn’t it? But I’d love to shake his hand and say: ‘Thank you very much for getting rid of them.’”

Daniel Radcliffe and Lena Headey among 750 signatories of petition urging BBC to reverse decision to take BBC3 off TV screens and make it online only

Click here to see the full list of the signatories

Olivia Colman, Daniel Radcliffe, Maxine Peake and more than 750 stars and other broadcasting figures have signed an open letter urging the BBC Trust to reverse a management decision to close BBC3 as a terrestrial television channel.

Their letter argues that the proposals to make the channel’s programmes only available online would “remove at a stroke a vitally important outlet for new talent and innovative ideas”.

“Everybody’s very, very nervous,” runs the most memorable lyrical refrain in “London Road,” and one imagines the filmmakers found themselves singing it often. An avant-garde musical based on the recorded testimonies of concerned residents following the Ipswich serial murders of 2006, Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s unique piece was a bold enough proposition for the U.K.’s National Theatre a few years ago, let alone for the bigscreen. Yet while Rufus Norris’ stage production was an unlikely triumph, its film adaptation — in the same helmer’s hands — emerges as something of a curate’s egg. Though performed with stalwart conviction by an ensemble including Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy, Blythe’s much-celebrated verbatim technique translates in surprisingly mannered fashion to camera, while Norris’ season-based visual treatment of the material cloys. Commercial appeal beyond Blighty is limited; even at home, this may prove a “Road” less traveled.

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